Wild Atlantic Salmon

Lord Beith Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, for 40 years I represented in the Commons a constituency which had almost every kind of salmon fishing: the net and coble fishery in the Tweed, a regulated drift-net fishery at sea, T-net fisheries off the Coquet, a fixed-engine fishery and, of course, the highly prized rod fishery in the Tweed and the Till, which brings much income to the hospitality and retail trades. Everybody participating in each of these fisheries thought that if all the others were abolished, there would not be a problem any more with runs of salmon, so a great deal of effort and quite a bit of private sector money have been invested in buyouts to end the rod-catch fishery, which itself is largely catch and return these days.

However, that has not solved the problems, which means that Ministers must address many of the issues which have been raised in the course of this debate. These include the malign effects of the salmon farming industry; the effect of predators, especially seals; the loss of spawning habitats, or the quality of habitats; river water quality more generally; and changing sea conditions, including sea temperature, which brings us to the big issue of global warming.

I do not believe, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, indicated, that we should put an end to killing of any wild salmon. Wild salmon is a delicacy. The way to conserve salmon does not require the complete abolition of all forms of regulated harvesting, but unless we attend to the issues that I and other noble Lords have referred to there will not be enough salmon to justify continuing that activity.